Zoolander is much deeper than you think
Movies teach lessons…like Zoolander.
I really like movies…alot. If you ask my wife she’ll tell you that I’m “obsessed” (I am). A silly favorite of mine is the movie Zoolander which features a male model (Ben Stiller) who has been mind controlled to assassinate the prime rib of Micronesia (spoiler alert). There’s one scene where Derek’s love interest Matilda confesses that she was bulimic as a child due to the fashion world’s portrayal of beauty, of course, Derek and Hansel fail to understand the gravity of the situation and hilarity quickly ensues.
I know this is a lame story to post but OMG it took me way longer to figure this out than is should have and the feature was buuuuuuried. Dark. UX. Pattern.
You’re frustrated because you’re having computer issues. Something has broken and is glitching causing you to not only look through google but to try all kinds of things that you’re pretty sure might cause your computer to explode. In your desperation you try anything because you really want to watch that last episode of “Raised by Wolves” (that show is crazy out there). …
I had a couple more snags as I was trying to mimic the modal demo Sketch gave so I’m going to break it down step by step as simply as I can.
There’s a couple features that I would love to see come to fruition more and more in UI design tools and one of them is responsiveness. It is a huge part of the modern day landscape of UI design and a large time-waste for studios and companies whose development team lacks the capability or relationship with the designers. Many responsive design issues can be resolved with a quick conversation and minimal static design. However, with a bit of setup, Sketch has made it possible to speed up and test a responsive product much quicker. …
Quotes taken from his 2017 letter to investors and thoughts and application added
You read that right. I’m as surprised as you are but when a fellow coworker sent the letter to me saying I should take some time and read it I found nuggets of wisdom that are applicable to all of us. I also found a new respect for the founder and CEO of Amazon, its no wonder the company is what it is today. Whether or not you respect him some of these truths have further application to all of us than just how he’s using them in his letter.
1. Intrinsic or Teachable
If you take me on your basketball team, you can teach me many things, but you can’t teach me to be taller. …
This isn’t going to be a long one guys but I wanted to get this out there sooner than later because I’ll forget and never post this.
We all love Sketch right now (as we wonder about Invision Studio) and using it has been a great addition to any designers workflow whatever you may be doing, though its usually UI design of some sort. Its great, love it, wonderful.
Animations?
OH yeah thats right. I used to do lots of great animations in photoshop and after effects to concept out how things might move, change, etc. What do I do now? ENTER Sketch2AE! It does exactly what it says it does…move sketch layers over to AE very nicely I might add. …
Yes they’re there and no you wont be happy about it because its still not that great— just be prepared
We all know that designer. Yes that designer that is working through a sweet new design in Sketch and then they come upon something so terrible its hard to talk about. It is the thing that shall not be named for those that use the Sketch app. Yes, you’ve got it. I’m talking about the “g” word. The dreaded “glyphs”. “OH NO NOT GLYPHS!!” you scream in dismay. “Yes————glyphs,” I cackle incoherently as the word slowly reverberates through your headphones, diminishing ever so quietly as the seconds strain to move forward. This is hell.
Not just glyphs though, there are other open type features that you may be interested in accessing and lets be honest, maybe we should say it all together. …
I have some thoughts and those thoughts are written below. You may agree or disagree with them as you will. LET THE JUDGEMENT BEGIN!!!
Sketch: The workhorse
Sketch has become my new workhorse application for UI / UX design. I can craft a page with wireframes, duplicate it and begin building visuals off of it. I can create symbols, detach symbols, modify quickly, and resave that symbol for new states etc. They’ve recently “figmafied” their symbols and I can edit the text within the symbol (though I can’t modify the child element like you can in Figma. +1 for Figma). Its simple to create SVGs, export in multiple sizes, and all sorts of fun and great things. I can add it quickly in my workflow with adobe illustrator and photoshop when I need it and for the most part I only use those programs for more creative or unique additions (icons, unique photo treatment etc). Sketch meets my needs and is quicker at most of the tasks that I use on every project than the competition. Also, its integration with Invision is profound and amazing. This is probably the reason sketch is so good is that it’s open and integrated with other things. …
It’s highly doubtful that a designer nails a project in the first attempt. More often than not the design solution is found somewhere after the multiple iterations. It’s not impossible to hit the nail on the head the first try but its definitely not likely. It takes a set of fresh eyes to suss out details and opportunities hiding within the layers of your files. Those opportunities are missed by the day to day designer. The one who’s been staring at the same section of the screen for an hour thinking, “I just need to put something there.” …
Its time to start thinking about your holistic customer journey as your most effective tool for marketing your brand.
A couple weeks ago I was part of a small panel discussion at the University of Minnesota. In this group were gathered a number of design professionals from different roles, all sourced from some agency or another. From founding owners to developers, social media strategists, market research, experience designers (me), etc. We were a robust group and all together, an interesting sample from the current make-up of a modern agency. We’d been given sample questions to study ahead of time, a list that could be condensed into a couple themes (let me first say that Snapchat was mentioned so many times you’d think there was nothing else available in the world). The questions were generic, student questions, I remember when I was sitting in their seats (albeit in a different location) I had similar questions. …
User experience design alone is too specific to solve problems at larger levels. I don’t mean that it can’t solve problems but as a practitioner who works in the field, I believe our understanding of it is too focused. Too specific. For example a better form field will help users save time but it wont necessarily save lives. Now if we were to look at the form field in the proper context, why the form needs to be improved or how its improvement is impacting services rendered we start to impact the organization. Especially if that impact moves beyond “UX” design into the rest of experience. If you have to complete a form to save your life the question isn’t “how do we make the form better?” the question is, “why the heck are we having people fill out a form while bleeding to death?!” …
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